


Anniversary

by fragilespark



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-08 06:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5486306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilespark/pseuds/fragilespark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The years pass, and Marian and the twins grow up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anniversary

The twins were a week old.

Marian was seven.

She didn’t understand her mother’s grief. Marian’s grandparents had always been ghosts of words, absent now as ever. She was old enough to know that they did not die because she now had a baby brother and sister, but when she played by herself - Mother resting from exhaustion and Father looking after the twins - she did wonder about life and death and souls and how they worked, things the other children never talked about. The snippets of Chant she heard while walking past the sisters seemed at times to be asking the same questions, and at others to be answering them, but her parents never stopped to listen and they didn’t attend.

 

The twins were four.

Marian was obsessed with the colour blue.

They all had their fixations. Bethany had not yet grown out of playing with any buttons within reach. Carver would still occasionally sit on the floor and stare at his toes while he wiggled them, getting rather grumpy if anyone interrupted him. Marian kept her collection of pretty blue things in a wooden box that her father had given her on her birthday. One day, she realised that everything in there was broken; the eggshell, the discarded brooch, the dead butterfly. She ran outside with it and tipped them out onto the street, and when her mother asked her why she was crying, she didn’t know how to reply.

 

The twins were arguing.

Marian was sixteen.

They had been in Lothering for a year. Carver was convinced they were going to have to move again and Bethany insisted that he should believe Father when he said they would stay. Marian watched them, knowing what would come after their fallout. They both stole away, divided, their tears hidden from everyone but most of all each other. The red-eyed silence was a practised defence, and would last as long as they had company. Then in private, in some mysterious way that Marian would never be party to, the bond was remade, and the next silence would be one of solidarity as they dared the world to challenge them.

 

The twins were fourteen.

Marian was the first one to find out.

This time she knew what grief was. It ripped through them all. They buried him and waited for the pain to end, for the grass to grow. There were days it seemed it never would, days that were choked frozen with despair. Carver worked the land because it needed it, not realising he needed it just as much. Bethany worked her magic and looked to Marian for guidance, not realising she had already mastered it. They were all lacking the faith that Malcolm had in them, Leandra most of all. While deep in mourning she also had to wonder how she would cope with everything. Marian didn’t have any answers, but she understood one thing. She was going to look after them.


End file.
